Resources

Discipline-Specific Resources

Math

Connolly and Vilardi outline the ways in which language affects the math
classroom. They argue the use of writing and an emphasis on language may help
traditionally under−represented student populations improve their performance in
the math classroom. This book is divided into six sections ranging from the
practical application of using language to solve math problems to aligning
programmatic outcomes with Writing Across the Curriculum.

This book argues using writing in a mathematics classroom allows students to see
math as something other than a set of pre−arranged formulas to memorize and
gives them ownership over the subject matter. Practically, Countryman posits
ways in which the classroom teacher can use various forms of writing like
journal articles, autobiographies and learning logs to enhance students’ ability
to understand mathematical concepts. Countryman provides examples of student
writing from across grade levels to underscore her argument.

Sociology

In this short journal article, the authors at a small liberal arts college
outline how emphasizing writing in their advanced sociology courses helps make
students better learners as well as better sociologists.

Science

In this relatively short book, Hancock covers what it means to become immersed in
scientific scholarly conversations. Taking a step−by−step approach, Hancock
discusses how to formulate research questions, conduct interviews and structure
a scientific essay’s story in compelling ways. She also provides examples of
scientific writing that maintains scientific rigor without an over−reliance on
technical jargon.

As a former chemist−turned−English teacher, Locke attempts to alleviate the
perception that science writing is a hyper−specialized repetitious event. He
devotes a chapter to the rhetorical effect of science writing and compares the
humorless, expressionless style of writing valued in certain publications with
Barbara McClintock’s passionate rendering of the genome. He goes on to argue for
the importance of story−telling when conveying a novel scientific worldview,
using Einstein’s presentation of his relativity theory and others as
examples.

Useful Links for Electronic Writing Across the Curriculum

The OWL at Purdue University (sponsored by Writing Center) provides sources for
writers on drafting, revising, editing, citation, etc. It includes resources for
teachers as well as guide sheets and activities for student writers. The site is
accessible, and offers useful support for students who need more explanation or
practice with concepts introduced in class.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison WAC site provides a broad range of resources
including suggestions for incorporating writing into courses (sequencing
assignments in a syllabus, conference with students, response, etc.) and
discipline specific examples from faculty.

The writing site at Colorado State offers abundant resources for student writers
and instructors. Resources are organized into “collections” around a particular
topic. For example, if you need help teaching or engaging in the composing
process, the “composing process” collection will give you access to several
related resources including “development,” a collection that offers further
resources, such as writing guides for including detail (and more) from which you
can choose according to your needs. Extensive resources are available for
instructors and are organized by discipline or by focus area.

Harvard Study of Writing--In 1997, Harvard embarked on a four-year study of
undergraduate writing and the results of this study are located at this address.
Nancy Sommers and her colleagues make the statistical results of the study
available via hyperlink and also made a 14-minute film version of the study’s
findings. Perhaps the most compelling form of data presentation comes in another
short film devoted solely for the purpose of response called Across the Drafts.
In this 20-minute film, we meet a freshman comp student and his writing teacher
conversing about their individual experiences in a writing classroom. Jon (the
student) and Tom (the instructor) provide some practical anecdotes and offer
some advice as to how to tailor feedback to which students are likely to be
receptive.

Selected Writing across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines and College Writing
Development Literature

In this series of short case-studies, Chris Anson allows instructors to play the
"what-if" game with a number of issues pertaining to WAC/WID. Readable and
challenging, Anson asks us to think about complex issues such as designing
writing assignments across courses, negotiating competing goals in an
inter-disciplinary course setting and responding effectively to student writing.
At the heart of this book, Anson asks teachers interested in WAC to consider
what´s important about student writing and how it can best be used to enhance a
student´s academic experience.

For example, in the case titled "Showdown at Midwestern U.," a lively email
exchange occurs between two professors with competing ideologies about the
purpose of general education writing courses. Bob, a department chair of the
economics department, comes to Sherry, the director of the Office of Campus
Writing, arguing the purpose a first-year writing class should be to teach
students how to construct arguments based on a synthesis of other literary
texts. Sherry counters by arguing that since so much writing done in an academic
setting is discipline-specific, developing a student´s ability to write about
literature would serve only to make them more adept at writing about
literature.

At the end of this and other case-studies in the book, Anson provides a set of
open-ended questions for readers to consider. These grand questions about
writing´s different purposes across disciplines are what make this book a fine
entry-point for those interested in familiarizing themselves with the ongoing
conversations at work in WAC/WID.

This annotated bibliography of all things WAC is divided into two parts: Anson
devotes the first third of the text to the theoretical framework behind the
sub-genre and the rest of the book to discipline-specific texts about
incorporating writing into the curriculum. A two-sentence description follows
each entry.

This collection consists of articles representing the range of WAC work over
time. Pieces in the first section trace the history of the WAC movement from the
first literacy crisis in the 1870´s in order to explain the reasons for the
movement´s success and staying power. The second section explores programmatic
and institutional projects ranging from studying student learning in individual
courses to Fulwiler´s suggestions about how to make WAC initiatives work and
Kinneavy´s description of the kinds of ways institutions approach WAC. The
section ends with Maimon´s essay about the second stage of WAC, how we go about
growing and nurturing WAC programs that are well established. Janet Emig´s oft
cited article introduces the third section, which looks at WAC in the classroom.
She explores why writing is such a unique way of learning in any context. Other
studies examine what it is like for students to learn to write in different
disciplinary classrooms.

The first part of the book is an overview of key terms and historical moments
relevant to the Writing Across the Curriculum movement. Bazerman defines the
difference b/w WAC and WID in terms of literacies, pedagogies and curricular
initiatives. The second part of the book outlines 3 major approaches to theory
and research in WAC: classroom writing practices, writing to learn, and rhetoric
of inquiry. In higher education, students often do not see the personal or
professional relevance of the goals of writing in disciplinary courses. Across
studies students seem to share the "struggle to come to discover what it is they
know, what it is they are committed to, and how those perceptions and
commitments can be enacted in professional and academic ways" (47) suggesting
that writing in any discipline needs to be made relevant to students" lives. The
book suggests new directions for the WAC movement including writing intensive
courses, Writing Center and peer tutor initiatives, interdisciplinary learning
communities, service learning, and electronic communication across the
disciplines. Finally, the book addresses the challenges educators and
administrators face in assessing and evaluating student work and WAC programs.
Offers further resources by discipline.

Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor´s Guide to Integrating Writing,
Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 2001.

"A pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts guide" for busy college professors across the
disciplines, Engaging Ideas is designed to help teachers engage students in
activities that support critical thinking and active learning. Divided into four
sections, the book can be read linearly from front to back or can be easily
searched depending on the needs of the reader. Grounded in the principles of
Writing Across the Curriculum, sections take up the connection between thinking
and writing, the creation of problem-based writing assignments, designing
reading, writing and thinking activities for active learning in the classroom,
and responding to student writing. Bean provides classroom examples from a range
of courses with different formats, subject matter, learning goals and
departmental circumstances. With suggestions that are easily adapted to
particular learning situations, Bean´s is an incredibly useful hands-on
resource.

Carroll presents a longitudinal study of college students throughout their
college experience. Her findings suggest that first-year writing courses are
useful, but not sufficient, in terms of supporting students" development as
writers. Rather, she argues that faculty in the disciplines can and should
develop strategies to support students" growth, proposing ways for instructors
in specialized disciplines to build on the rhetorical skills and sensibilities
students begin developing in first- year composition courses. She outlines six
recommendations including "redesigning the literacy environment" of students´
majors so they work on complex literacy tasks over sequenced courses; providing
"scaffolding" for development by explicitly teaching discipline specific genres
and research strategies; and carefully designing projects that will challenge a
range of students by emphasizing the process rather than only the product of
writing assignments (129-410).

This article responds to the common assertion that disciplines teach specialized
knowledge while writing is a generalizable skill. To the contrary, Carter argues
that ways of knowing in a particular discipline are closely tied to ways of
doing in that discipline. Moreover, writing should be considered a vital way of
doing that is best conceptualized and taught by experts in the discipline. In
other words, disciplinary instructors have a responsibility, according to
Carter, to use writing as a "means of teaching and evaluating" what students
should be able to do and know in their major disciplines (409).

Composed of essays authored by fourteen faculty members at Michigan Technological
University, this collection argues teachers across the disciplines should use
James Britton’s concept of "expressive" utterances as a frame for understanding
and valuing students processes of coming to know. The contributors suggest in
varying ways that teachers in all disciplines value students’ ideas in process
as well as those ideas as represented in final products. Discussing students as
developing readers and writers, the essays propose that in addition to
activities encouraging students to write to learn, listening as well as small
and large group discussion activities facilitate students’ engagement with
language, therefore enhancing students’ understanding of course material.

The article is intended for faculty and administrators involved in the early
stages of implementing a Writing Across the Curriculum program as well as those
in the process of rethinking the goals of an existing initiative. The author
suggests Writing Across the Curriculum programs can and should serve as sites of
educational reform. While faculty and leaders need to focus on teaching
discipline−specific writing practices, students should also be made conscious of
the social construction and history of disciplinary norms, thus making critical
thinking skills central to the teaching of writing. Cohen argues faculty and
administrators must work together from within existing disciplinary structures
to develop shared goals for teaching students not only to use disciplinary
discourses, but to critique them as well.

The collection is made up of five sections. The first, "Historical Perspectives"
describes the British and American origins of WAC. The second, "Disciplinary and
Predisciplinary Theory" asks if we should focus on disciplinary knowledge or
more general issues of teaching and learning that go beyond disciplines (45).
Britton´s piece investigates how students use structures and tools they have
developed in other experiences to make sense of new concepts and ideas.
Bazerman, in "From Cultural Criticism to Disciplinary Participation: Living with
Powerful Words" argues that we must make visible the historical, shifting,
multivoiced make up of the disciplines so students see the social consequences
of their work in these disciplines. Judith Langer explores the difference
between making content or the rules of discourse the subject matter of our
courses as opposed to making ways of inquiring and thinking central to the work
of teaching and learning. In response to the call for teachers to develop more
accurate language for talking about discipline-specific thinking and writing
with students, Odell looks at patterns of thinking that influence how
disciplinary instructors evaluate good writing. The final section examines the
epistemological and ideological aspects of the disciplines and implications for
writing, teaching and learning.

Herrington, Anne and Marcia Curtis. Persons in Process. Urbana, IL:
National Council of Teachers of English, 2000.

Herrington and Curtis follow four college students over a period of their years
of university study and theorize from their development as writers in several
courses across disciplines. Drawing from Kohut´s "self-in-relationship to
objects" psychoanalytic theory of personal development, they demonstrate that
writing in all contexts is a more than merely an act of self expression and is
rather a self-constituting act, one that is always carried out in relationship
with others such as ones audience. Herrington and Curtis contend that because
students" writing development is closely tied to identity development, teachers
across the disciplines must learn to be empathetic, respectful and understanding
listeners, responders and analysts as much of the personal contact students have
with teacher is through writing. Furthermore, they argue students continue to
develop as writers throughout their academic careers when writing is infused
into the currriculum and therefore writing should be a part of courses across
the disciplines. The authors offer specific examples.

This text, designed primarily for students writing research papers in a variety
of disciplines, gives a number of helpful examples of successful research papers
that highlight the differences in conventions for each field of study. Hult
recognizes the importance of giving discipline−specific guidance to the writing
academic papers and includes work from fields such as business, social sciences
and biology. Also included in this reader is a complete reference guide for the
variety of citation formats students may encounter throughout their
coursework.

In this article Kiefer offers concrete suggestions for faculty who desire to
incorporate writing into their curriculum but may not know where to start. The
author suggests teachers begin by articulating their goals for students and
integrating writing by designing writing assignments that are meaningful and
further their stated goals. Kiefer provides detailed strategies to help teachers
to design meaningful research paper assignments, informal "writing−to−learn"
assignments, as well as specific "writing in the disciplines" tasks. Finally,
the author gives tips for assessing student writing.

Light, Richard J. Making the Most of College. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
2001.

At the heart of Light´s book is the premise that in order to foster significant
learning experiences for students, we first need to provide students
opportunities to voice their opinions, to fully listen to those opinions, and
finally to include those voices in our campus development efforts if we hope to
successfully increase active student engagement across the campus. Light
interviews college students asking them a variety of questions about learning
experiences in all areas of campus life. Specifically concerning writing, Light
notes that student respondents reported wanting more discipline-specific writing
instruction in their upper division courses and students reported that writing
instruction was most effective when writing was incorporated throughout the
semester in their courses. Additionally, Light notes that academic development
and personal development are tied"as students learn and process their coursework
they learn and change as individuals and subjects. Students find meaningful
learning experiences when their academic coursework extends and connects with
their lives outside of school.

This collection of essays offers faculty and administrators advice, models and
examples of Writing Across the Curriculum initiatives. The articles range from
suggestions for institutional consultants involved in the beginning stages of
implementing WAC/WID to models for faculty dialogue across the disciplines
concerning WAC/WID programs. Additionally, essays include resources for faculty
to assist in developing and sustaining writing intensive courses and offer tools
for supporting WAC/WID. The collection offers a list of further reading for
those interested in starting WAC/WID initiatives.

This collection includes essays from distinguished professors in nine different
disciplines and provides analyses of various disciplinary discourses as well as
writing strategies commonly employed in the respective disciplines. The
collection functions as a useful tool for teachers and researchers across
disciplines to identify disciplinary practices and read across these practices
in order to come to a deeper understanding of how language is valued and used in
the disciplines.

Moss and Holder argue for a collaborative approach to student writing within the
disciplines. They assert student writing will improve the most through group
projects that approximate real−life working situations and outline methods for
faculty to enact these scenarios. In this guide, intended for faculty, the
authors present strategies for assigning writing in the classroom, designing
effective assignments and writing−based tests, and evaluating student
writing.

In this article Orr describes his successful use of the "one−minute paper"—an
exercise in student reflection and teacher assessment proposed by Richard Light.
At the end of each class, Orr has his students write for one minute about what
they learned and what they still do not understand. The author offers examples
of how the technique allows him to gauge his students’ learning on a daily basis
and assists him in planning future classes that are responsive to the needs of
the majority of his students. He ultimately suggests that the technique is
especially successful in lower−level courses where students are the most likely
to be hesitant to voice concerns and raise questions.

In this article Palsberg and Baxter describe the design of a graduate course in
which the teaching of review writing, an important genre for a new Ph.D. to be
able to master but one that is rarely a part of a Ph.D. education, is a primary
goal. The authors demonstrate how practicing writing in this new genre
facilitated the improvement of students’ writing and reading skills in other
areas. The authors reflect on the benefits and limitations of such a course and
offer suggestions for faculty interested in developing similar courses.

Reiss, Donna, Dickie Selfe, and Art Young, eds. Electronic Communication
across the Curriculum. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of
English, 1998.

"Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum is an edited collection
in which teachers and program heads throughout the United States present
adaptable models of computer-supported communication using the pedagogies of
writing for learning and writing with computers -- including science, math,
history, philosophy, technical writing, accounting, literature, and marketing."
The WAC Clearinghouse (http://wac.colostate.edu/bib/index.cfm?category=1)

Reiss, Donna, Dickie Selfe, and Art Young, eds. Electronic Communication across
the Curriculum. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English,
1998.

This collection centers on the possibilities technology offers to enhance writing
instruction and provides educators models of a wide−range of electronic
communication tools that facilitate the teaching of writing across the
disciplines.

Drawing on the work of Gregory Marshal, Ronald articulates the importance of
community among teachers when working toward curricular change. Ronald
illustrates connections between her experience developing and communicating to
new teachers a revised curriculum for first year writing at Miami University and
her work creating "a culture of writing" among Business faculty and students.
The relationship between teaching and curriculum is vital, she argues, and it
takes impassioned, honest, energetic teachers (and teachers of teachers) to
productively motivate that relationship.

Roost outlines some qualities of students working in artistic majors, like
Theatre, that might make them particularly resistant to the writing process and
suggests ways teachers can respond to students’ needs by incorporating "low
stakes" assignments in their courses. "Low stakes" activities do not influence
students’ grades and ask students to explore ideas or experiment with genre,
form and writing strategies and might lead students to reflect on creative
processes or think critically about course concepts. Roost offers examples of
both "low stakes" and "high stakes" assignments along with ideas (including peer
review groups and cover letters from the writer) for making grading and
responding to student writing manageable.

A review of David Russell´s book contends a discipline grows up when someone
writes about its history and argues for its merit. If this is true, than
Writing in the Academic Disciplines serves as the WAC/WID
movement´s first car. Russell provides an exhaustive history of how writing has
traditionally been conceptualized in academic settings and argues Writing Across
the Curriculum is not merely a passing fad or a new way of talking about an
already failed experiment. Instead, Russell demonstrates how WAC work has been a
cornerstone of American intellectual life since Harvard´s founding in the 17th
Century.

While other histories of composition in the United States make for a more
engaging read (think James Berlin´s Rhetoric for example), the conclusions
pertinent to WAC/WID interests he comes to at the end of the book make it
worthwhile. He contends one of the most important virtues of the current WAC/WID
movement that similar ones lacked is a common language. He makes the case for
structured spaces within institutions for both practical and scholarly WAC/WID
work that will sustain and legitimize the movement.

Sargent recounts her experience using peer response activities to help students
in various literature courses engage more productively with difficult course
readings in order to illustrate how peer response to low stakes writing in any
course can become a productive way to manage the time it takes for a professor
to respond regularly to writing assignments, as well as a useful framework for
helping students learn from one another as they wrestle with complex course
concepts. She shares strategies for modeling peer response for students and
ideas for handling peer response in large introductory as well as smaller upper
level courses. Ultimately, she explains, peer response allows her to get a sense
of how students are interacting with the assigned readings; to design her
lectures in response to students’ questions and interests; to model for students
the developmental nature of literary interpretation; and help students practice
writing to learn.

Segall, Mary and Robert A. Smart. Direct from the Disciplines: Writing Across
the Curriculum. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 2005.

This practical book outlines core principles guiding WAC work, provides a case
study of what one university´s WAC program looks like and gives a number of
sample assignments from a variety of disciplines. Nine different academic
disciplines are represented in the book and each articulates how the WAC
principles outlined in the introduction are implemented in a specific kind of
class. For example, a professor in computer science shows how he teaches the
basic structure of computer programming by showing how similar writing code can
be to organization in standard writing.

Most chapters in the book begin with a professor´s rationale for why they chose
to incorporate WAC/WID into their course design, then move to exactly what this
looks like in practice through detailed course objectives and sample writing
assignments. Also helpful are examples of student work interspersed throughout
most of these narratives. Even though it´s easy to imagine someone picking up
this book for what it can illuminate about teaching WAC/WID in their own
specific discipline, the theoretical framework interspersed throughout the
collection can be universally applied in most cases.

Sternglass, Marilyn. Time to Know Them: A Longitudinal Study of Writing and
Learning at the College Level.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
1997.

In this longitudinal study of student writing, Sternglass examines the multiple
facets of inquiry involved with students learning to write. She discusses their
individual histories, their progress as students, as people, and as respondents
to high−stakes writing assessment. The larger logic of Sternglass’ argument
contends de−contextualized forms of assessment inhibit the progress of all
students as writers, but is especially burdensome for students deemed
remedial.

Thaiss and Zawacki conduct a study at George Mason in which they interview
professors from a variety of disciplines about how they write, how they teach
writing and how they think about "alternative discourses," defined either as
resistance against disciplinary norms or as alternate but acceptable forms. They
interview students from across disciplines as well and find that students go
through three stages as writers: 1) They believe they know what all teachers
want because they have a sense of the "generic" standards most disciplines
share; 2) They recognize differences in expectations as idiosyncratic; 3) They
recognize differences as discipline and context specific. Students might not
reach the final stage because "they do not become sufficiently invested in the
discipline´s academic discourses, developing instead a greater connection to
nonacademic audiences and exigencies" (110). The final chapter about pedagogical
implications recommends ways to facilitate students" development into the third
stage, and includes suggestions for faculty across the disciplines, composition
program administrators and faculty development programs. The authors propose
excellent ideas for assignments that help students develop awareness of
themselves within and across disciplinary contexts.

Walvoord, Barbara. Helping Students Write Well: A Guide for Teachers in All
Disciplines. New York: Modern Language Association of America,
1982.

While students do learn transferable skills in composition courses, argues
Walvoord, they must continue to write across the curriculum in order to learn
how to apply what they learn in composition class to thinking, learning and
communicating in the disciplines. Positioning teachers in all disciplines as
coaches of writing, Walvoord describes ways to make writing meaningful to the
course and discipline-specific subject matter; how to respond to student writing
and guide students to respond to their own and their peers" writing; how to
address particular challenges students face as writers; and how to help students
become better writers while using writing to learn in all disciplines (5).

Walvoord, Barbara, Linda Lawrence Hunt, H. Fil Dowling, and Jean McMahon. In
the Long Run. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English,
1997.

Walvoord and her fellow researchers study teachers at three post-secondary
institutions in order to determine their expectations for Writing Across the
Curriculum programs; how the teachers interpreted their WAC experiences; and how
WAC experiences influenced teachers" philosophies and pedagogies of teaching;
and how WAC experiences effected the career patterns of participating teachers.
While chapter seven explores successful and not-so-successful WAC teaching
strategies by way of annotated assignment sheets and interviews with faculty,
findings from the study suggest that one of the most important thing teachers
took away from WAC experiences was the desire and ability to alter their
teaching philosophies and the confidence to experiment in order to develop
strategies appropriate to those philosophies.

In the opening pages of his short book, Young takes readers through a process of
reading student writing modeled after Writing Across the Curriculum workshops
he’s facilitated with faculty. His goal is to illustrate the difference between
assignments that ask students to use writing to learn course material and
assignments that require them to use writing to communicate what they have
learned. Each type of assignment requires that teachers read and respond to
student writing differently. Young elaborates on the pedagogical purposes of
writing to learn and writing to communicate, offering teaching strategies and
classroom activities for each.

Zerbe argues that scientific discourse is the major discourse of our time.
Compositionists cannot claim to help our students develop the skills and
mentalities needed for meaningful civic participation, a goal often strived for
by rhetoric and composition programs, if we do not teach them to understand and
engage the complexity of scientific discourse. Not only should students and
teachers in composition classrooms work toward a more sophisticated "scientific
literacy," but instructors in scientific disciplines need to help students
become conscious of the rhetorical, historical, economic, social, ethical and
personal aspects of the discourse in which they are learning to communicate.
Zerbe offers concrete scenarios and suggests specific ways teachers from
composition and scientific disciplines can help students develop this vital
literacy.